expression and physics

Here you will meet the first kind of experimentally observable hyperfine effects, which are due to the electric monopole shift. You will understand the physics behind the electric monopole shift and you can put it in relation to the general framework. You will understand how it gives rise to experimentally observable features (isotope shift and isomer shift).

There are 3 tasks related to this topic. One of them can be discussed in the ‘post first’ forum underneath. The other two can be submitted as one pdf via the box at the very bottom.

Task 1: Imagine you are an observer who sits inside the hydrogen nucleus and who observes the behavior of the 1s electron over time. How would you describe to a 15-year old child the time-averaged position of this electron?

Post your answer in this forum, and feel free to comment respectfully on the answers of your colleagues:

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Task 2: Ponder once again the peculiar interpretation of the electric potential in the monopole shift: “It is an addition to the electric potential at the nuclear position by the electron cloud, yet one that depends on properties of the electron cloud as well as on properties of the nucleus.” Hmm… this extra potential is proportional to the mean square radius of the nucleus. If we would make the nucleus infinitely large, this extra potential would start to dominate and would become even infinite. That seems weird. Why is that reasoning probably not correct?

Task 3: In the Bohr picture of a hydrogen atom, the 1s electron is in a circular orbit with r=0.529177 Å. Sticking to the Bohr picture, what would be the radius of the 1s orbit in a muonic hydrogen atom?

Prepare your answers to task 2 and task 3 in one single pdf file (typed or hand-written), preferably compress it, and upload it as pdf file (not zipped, not tarred,…) via the ‘quiz’ button underneath:

monopole shift

It may be interesting to stroll through related Wikipedia pages (optional).

Expected time: 50 minutes (report)

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